Parental Angst Is Real Star of 'Evil-Kiddie' Movies

Yale professor warns against becoming a 'click-vegetable'

(NEWSER) - The Internet and iPads and smartphones are great for adults—but we need to take a hard look at what they're doing to our kids, warns a computer science professor at Yale. It may be tempting to let them sit down with an iPad come June, but such technology is preventing their minds from doing what they need to do: "rest and work," writes David Gelernter in the Wall Street Journal . Rest means "wandering freely," while work requires a climb up a "mental rope." More»

Joss Whedon-produced horror-comedy defies convention

(NEWSER) - Critics are applauding Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods for its delectable mixture of horror and humor. From a familiar premise—five college students alone in the forest—come all kinds of surprises.

• "A fiendishly clever brand of meta-level genius propels The Cabin in the Woods," writes Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post . It's "a pulpy, deceivingly insightful send-up of horror movies that elicits just as many knowing chuckles as horrified gasps."

Adorable 'facial cues' fade at that age: researchers

(NEWSER) - No one's saying that 5-year-olds can't be adorable—but it appears that they're past their prime, in cuteness terms. Researchers in Canada and China polled adults on the cuteness factor of kids from infancy to 6 years old. Subjects called the younger children cuter, with a big shift at age 4½. At that point, key "facial cues" like big eyes and heads combined with small noses and mouths become less apparent, Time reports. More»

Bodies found at campground, handgun nearby

(NEWSER) - A mother and her three young daughters were found shot to death near a Missouri campground in what police believe was a triple murder-suicide. Each was killed by a single gunshot, and the weapon was found near the bodies, according to police. The four were not staying at the Bourbon campground, but the mother's vehicle was found nearby. They were identified as 37-year-old Christine Adewunmi, and daughters Lauren, 8, Samantha, 6, and Kate, 3. Christine's husband and the father of the girls reported them missing last week, according to KMOX-TV . "There was no indication of any problems," a neighbor told Fox2. More»

At least if official recommendations are any guide

(NEWSER) - If doctors' recommendations are accurate, then kids have been sleep-deprived for more than a century. Researchers reviewed dozens of sets of sleep guidelines dating from 1897 to 2009 and compared them to data on how much sleep kids actually have gotten over the years. They found that kids have consistently slept about 37 minutes less than experts suggested, the Wall Street Journal reports. They also discovered that the recommended amount shrunk by about 0.71 minutes each year. More»